Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 09:20:28 -0700 From: "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" <michaelv@HeadCandy.com> To: dennis@etinc.com (Dennis) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: mitsumi CD-ROM Message-ID: <199607171620.JAA06023@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 17 Jul 96 10:29:06 -0400. <199607171429.KAA23687@etinc.com>
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>"Knowing better" isnt the issue. I have countless PCs in my lab, and only
>my servers have SCSI. I dont need scsi for most of what I do, and to pay
>$30 extra for it would be a waste, $150 or $200 is a mega waste
>When I load a linux distrubution (I download FreeBSD), I slap on a cheap
>IDE CDROM, load it up, and then put it back on the shelf. I dont have to
>worry about whether the brand of SCSI controller i have is supported, or
>shared memory, or I/O or anything else.
OK, this is your opinion, and I can accept that.
>To no-doubt spurn another wide-eyed debate among the academics, I also
>dont want a bus-mastering controller stealing the bus from my more-critical
>communications in a router-system where disk functions are secondary.
This makes no sense. The only time a bus-mastering controller
"steals" the bus is when you're doing I/O. An IDE drive not only
steals the bus by implication, but it steals the CPU as well!
Basically, IDE steals the entire machine until the I/O is finished.
At least with a bus-mastering controller, the CPU can run out of the
cache while a disk transfer is in progress.
I can understand your opinion on this, as stated above. But to think
that you're not getting the bus, and the CPU, stolen, when
bus-mastering would steal only the bus, is a complete
misunderstanding.
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Michael L. VanLoon michaelv@HeadCandy.com
--< Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x >--
NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3,
Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32...
NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others...
Roll your own Internet access -- Seattle People's Internet cooperative.
If you're in the Seattle area, ask me how.
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